This is a great book, full of essays about running high level superhero games. Since my group runs M&M 3e, it's helpful that the book is mostly essays with only a few stats. It allows me to much more easily transfer the concepts to our game.

Several useful sections, especially the "non-crunch" parts on how to run a high powered campaign and what you could possibly do when you're powerful enough to rule the world. 101 adventure ideas was also useful, and a fun read at that.

I was less satisfied with the skills and powers presented. Extreme skills are better modelled by powers in M&M and the powers are mostly stuff like Energy Blast with a lot of Area extras. I liked some of the feats though, especially the tounge-in-cheek names.

A few characters are presented, with stats and art. I found most of the concepts original and fun.

The art is passable to pretty bad, in my opinion, and suffers from terrible anathomy.

I'm a pretty big fan of Marvel and DC Cosmic Crossover style events (That is, I'm a big fan of the GOOD ones) and this sourcebook is all you need to run an original campaign of that type or convert Supreme Esoteric Cosmic Beings [pick a power you'd never allow your players to have in a normal campaign]-men and Omnipotent Weirdoes to Mutants & Masterminds.

As well as rules for phenomenal cosmic power, there are a bunch of original heroes and villains, only a few of which are homages/knock-offs, which serve as great examples of cosmic-level characters that can still be challenged with a little ingenuity, as long as you don't expect "normal" level villains to be a problem for them. After all, these guys are supposed to repair rifts in the space time continuum before breakfast and Doctor Ego and his Entropy Ray would only serve as a minor distraction. That doesn't mean repairing continuums is easy for them (until they gain a few more levels), just that they have to save the universe instead of the planet on a regular basis.

I haven't acutally used it in play yet, but the sheer number of ideas (some of which can be used in a 10-20 Power Level campaign in moderation) is worth the price.

This includes the pieces you'd need for a super-super-hero game, and it's well-written and fun to read. Just don't expect to be as able to pick it up and run a 20+ level campaign as easily as you could pick up the basic Mutants and Mastermind and run a 10th level campaign -- it's a good toolkit but requires a lot of work from the GM.

I really didn't like the idea of this product at first. Take Mutants and Masterminds past the PL20 barrior into "Cosmic" levels? Sounds like a munchkin power gamer's dream.

But I was wrong.

I'm still not convinced about PL20+ play being balanced, but this book goes a long way towards addressing issues faced at that level. But even if you don't plan to play at those levels, there's plenty of material here that you could use at PL10-20.

About half the book is colour and background, describing the issues faced by cosmic level heroes both in terms of gameworld and game mechanics. There's 101 scenario ideas, many of which could be adapted to world-class heroes.

There are the usual crunchy bits - new feats, many of which may be usable by villains at the PL15-20 range. and DCs for using powers at ultra-high levels (cure cancer? DC60 Scienc e check please.)

The sample cosmic level characters have some interesting ideas, and could probably be adapted as lower-level characters, or major villains for lower-level teams.

Then there's the mass battle rules - simply put they boil down to grouping larger numbers of identical combatants into a single "metacharacter" and fighting the combat normally using an extended timeframe, based on the power of the character. This is more of an abstract resolution system, but I think it would work well. Definitely a must if you want to refight the Terminus invasion, but you might also be able to use this for those Agents of AEGIS vs Hordes of villain minions battles that go on in the background while the main heroes duke it out.

What's bad? The artwork, while nicely done, isn't in the usual comic book style, and one or two don't seem entirely appropriate to the issue of "cosmic" heroes. Didn't work for me (with the exception of the pic on P74), but YMMV.

The layout is crisp and clear, and there are two versions, one with borders for screen viewing, one without for ink-friendly printing.

Is this a must-buy for M&M GMs? No, not buy a long shot. But it certainly is a worthwhile purchase.